‘Even after ‘Better Be Good To Me‘ had already been a hit, Tina and I had never met or talked. Roger Davies, her manager called me up one day and told me that Tina had just finished doing a movie in Australia. It was the followup to cult classic Mad Max, and she needed a tune to sing in the movie. So I read the script and wrote ‘One Of The Living’, a post apocalyptic metal cruncher. Roger sent it to Tina who was touring in Europe and she loved it. There was a deadline for the release of the movie that had to be met, so we decided to cut the tune before she got back to LA, and all she would have to do is walk in and sing it. My one problem with this plan was figuring out what key Tina would want to sing the tune in. (This can make or break a vocal performance, so getting it right was very important). Roger suggested I overnight her a cassette with a few versions in different keys, but I wasn’t confident that that would bring a reliable or accurate result – what if her cassette machine was running at a different speed than mine because of the different electrical currents between the two continents, or the batteries ran the machine at a faster or slower speed than mine ? So Roger said, “okay I’m flying to London tomorrow to see her and you’re going to have to come with me.”

That’s how I finally met Tina. She showed up at Heathrow Airport with her road manager in a limo which I thought was unusually nice of her. We figured out the right key the next day in all of five minutes, and Tina invited me to accompany her on her tour for the next week through London, Paris and Switzerland before I had to head back home to the studio. We stayed in some gorgeous places, ate in some amazing restaurants, went to Azzedine Alia’s studio, (the couture designer) in Paris, I saw her perform night after night from the side of the stage. I never thought being a songwriter would include such awesome ‘perks’. But the best part was just getting to know Tina on an intimate level like this.

‘One Of The Living’ is one of my favorites that I wrote, and has to go in my top ten list. -HK